Quality Music CD-R's?

Motzart

Is there any such thing anymore?
I was using Maxell Music Pro CD-R's but can't find em in my area anymore.
They worked great!!

I recently bought some "average" Sony Music CD-R's and when I burned one it sounded like crap!
Static and such......original file on my puter was fine....I wasn't happy!
I later burned the tracks to a regular Maxell CD-R and it sounds just fine.
Is it me or is a regular Music CD more durable than a CD-R burn?
Surface of a CD-R seems more tender to scratching to me.

Is there even a diff tween a Music CD-R and a regular CD-R?

Motzart

WOW no input on this? :eek:

danger boy

no input..because I don't think many people burn CD- R's anymore. I know I haven't in years. most people use their MP3 players or like me and are old school and just listen to the original CD

Motzart

danger boy wrote: »

no input..because I don't think many people burn CD- R's anymore. I know I haven't in years. most people use their MP3 players or like me and are old school and just listen to the original CD

Wow I find that hard to believe.
Gezzzz maybe I need to get out from under my rock now and then?

janmike

Owning an Esoteric X-03 I would not venture to burn my own. If so, I would have kept my old player. Besides, I'm hooked on SACD.

Rivrrat

I still burn cd's off Itunes for my truck, The last batch I got seem to skip a lot.

Motzart

Rivrrat wrote: »

I still burn cd's off Itunes for my truck, The last batch I got seem to skip a lot.

Yeah a lotta people still burn CD-R Music even if they don't admit it. :rolleyes:

megasat16

I use regular 10-15 cents Sony CD-R for music or data. If it scratches bad, just burn another copy. I don't notice any hiss or static as you mentioned.

To hell with the Music grade CD-R if you have to pay more and it skips when u can burn repeatedly cheap with regular CD-R.

Motzart

megasat16 wrote: »

I use regular 10-15 cents Sony CD-R for music or data. If it scratches bad, just burn another copy. I don't notice any hiss or static as you mentioned.

To hell with the Music grade CD-R if you have to pay more and it skips when u can burn repeatedly cheap with regular CD-R.

Dunno about other brands but as I mentioned I have used Maxell Music CD-R Pro's and never a problem.
Well till I ran out of em....that's a problem!

Maybe the Sony I tried was a fluke?
I did notice it was a lil thinner CD than the Maxell tho.

dorokusai

I like the MOFI CD-R's but I don't burn that often. If I did alot of work I'd use cheap ones.

Jim Shearer

I never carry originals in the car, only back-ups. I tried a batch of Maxells & they were full of errors. Had good luck w/ HPs and Fujis (so far.:cool:)

Cheers, Jim

hearingimpared

Mofi gold CD-Rs.

F1nut

MoFi gold CD-R's.

ND13

Never knew there was a truly good burned cd.;):D

hearingimpared

Burned CDs sound better than the stamped CDs.

nikolas812

hearingimpared wrote: »

Burned CDs sound better than the stamped CDs.

Thats what somebody else told me.. He said his local hi-fi shop has nothing but burned CD's to demo there gear with...

They have to be burned a certain way though. Don't they?


Nick

heiney9

I use a good quality brand of regular data cdr's. Sony, TDK and Verbatim all have worked flawlessly for me over the years. Many times it has to do with the ripping and/or burning program so make sure you're using well known reliable programs.

I have found when burning both dvdr's and cdr's there just seem to be a few incompatibilities with some burners and media. I pretty much stick with what's always worked for me. These instances are on the rare side though.

Stay away from the cheap no name crap, especially large quantity cake spindles.....the quality control seems to be all over the place for the el cheapo discs.

Also you don;t need to buy "music cdr's" the extra cost isn't worth it IMO,

hearingimpared

nikolas812 wrote: »

Thats what somebody else told me.. He said his local hi-fi shop has nothing but burned CD's to demo there gear with...

They have to be burned a certain way though. Don't they?


Nick

Yes, very slowly.

thsmith

I have great luck with just the plane old Maxell CDs.

DarqueKnight

Motzart wrote: »

WOW no input on this? :eek:

Here's an old thread you may find interesting:

Better Sound With Music CD-R's

Motzart

Thanx for the info DK!
Some very interesting reading for sure.
A real science to something we take for granted every day.

Roy Munson

I like Verbatim but I have to say I don't burn a lot of music cd's. Usually I'll burn a copy to use in the car.

Now for movies Verbatim 8X DL blanks made in Singapore are about as good as it gets but they are getting hard to find.

BigMac

I use the Memorex music cd-r and burn at 1-2x speed and have not had a coaster is quite some time. Before I purchased my Marantz universal player I had an old NAD cd player that would not play burned cds at all from what the previous owned stated. Through trial and error with different brands and burn speeds I had the best results with Memorex music cd-r. My Marantz universal player,X-Box 360,PS3,older JVC I won in a Karma thread here,an older Toshiba and a older Kenwood cd player at my gym all play these burned discs great......I have not gotten one "disc read error" or "no disc" messages in a very long time.

Willow

I still burn CD's. One thing I can say is stay away from the all black CDs they are crap. the only machine in the house that can read them is the computer. All my other sources receive errors.

avelanchefan

Hmmm, I have seen a lot of error's reported here. Which is surprising, I primarily use the cheapest ones I can find, I have burned over 100 cd's in the last year with one coaster. All of it has been either Sony or Maxwell, burned with NERO 7 at 48x. No static, no skips, I have burned both Audio CDr's, and MP3 Jukebox CDr's.

I always burn max speed. Whether its CDr's, DVD-r's, or DVD-DL's. Maybe it's the burner I have which is an LG Sata Burner.

Danny Tse

I use only Japanese-made "Music" CD-Rs. I've been using Maxell Music-Pro (packaged in regular jewel cases and in spindle) and Sony "Music" CD-Rs (packaged in spindle and with red plastic wrapping). I loaded up on these when they were available so I haven't been buying CD-Rs in the last 2 months or so. None has gone back for me yet....I also burn at the lowest possible speed my CD burner will allow (4X) and use only water-based CD-specific markers to write on them to ensure longevity. Geeky, huh?

Motzart

Danny Tse wrote: »

I use only Japanese-made "Music" CD-Rs. I've been using Maxell Music-Pro (packaged in regular jewel cases and in spindle) and Sony "Music" CD-Rs (packaged in spindle and with red plastic wrapping). I loaded up on these when they were available so I haven't been buying CD-Rs in the last 2 months or so. None has gone back for me yet....I also burn at the lowest possible speed my CD burner will allow (4X) and use only water-based CD-specific markers to write on them to ensure longevity. Geeky, huh?

Just me but.....I never write directly on a Cd.
I use the stick on lables after they go threw my printer with all my prefered printing.
That's what I was using was the Maxell Music Pro in seperate jewel cases.
Dunno if they are still availible cuz I can't find em around here anymore.
I was picky in my tape days also....only used the best Maxell's at the time.
I only choose to use Cd's from companies that have been in the music recordable media biz for years.
Maxell....TDK......Sony......nothing known just for media storage....I'm anal that way! :rolleyes:

While the Mofi Golds might be nice....now way will I spend that kinda dinero for blanks. I'm picky about quality but not that picky!

I burn with Ashampoo Burning Studio or CdBurner XP @ 48X with no problems 99% of the time.
My PC burner is a DVD R/RW Lite-On which was standard equipment with my Dell at the time.

heiney9

You do understand that just like the tape days......there are only a few "plants" that actually produce the raw materials for all brands of recordable media.

I'm with you though........I stick with what works; like I said I've used Sony, Maxell, Verbatim data discs and used to use Fuji (can't seem to find them anymore). I just wait until one of the 3 are on sale locally or at New Egg.

In the early days of cdr's I used japanese only Tao Yuden's exclusively with excellent success.

H9

Danny Tse

Motzart wrote: »

Just me but.....I never write directly on a Cd.
I use the stick on lables after they go threw my printer with all my prefered printing.
That's what I was using was the Maxell Music Pro in seperate jewel cases.
Dunno if they are still availible cuz I can't find em around here anymore.
I was picky in my tape days also....only used the best Maxell's at the time.
I only choose to use Cd's from companies that have been in the music recordable media biz for years.
Maxell....TDK......Sony......nothing known just for media storage....I'm anal that way! :rolleyes:

While the Mofi Golds might be nice....now way will I spend that kinda dinero for blanks. I'm picky about quality but not that picky!

I burn with Ashampoo Burning Studio or CdBurner XP @ 48X with no problems 99% of the time.
My PC burner is a DVD R/RW Lite-On which was standard equipment with my Dell at the time.

I suppose I am too lazy to print out a label for the CD-R. Maybe I should....any recommendations?

I never had much luck with TDK....going back to the blank cassette days. Back then, we had fist fights at our college radio station over the preferred blank cassette tape (mine was Sony UX-series high bias tapes).

Memorex....never like their blank cassettes and I've heard nothing but negative comments on their blank CD-Rs.

Fongolio

I use printables (print directly on the cd) in my cheapo HP printer. Very very few coasters any brand. Also use printable DVD's. Fantastic results nearly every time.

timlitton

I've seen the discussion of whether the media brand affects general sound quality and it's like asking whether a Word Document looks better from a Verbatim CD or a Maxell CD.

In the digital world, information is simply 1's and 0's. Digital has no preference to pictures vs audio vs video vs word documents. Our computerized devices have to be TOLD what type of information is in the data and how to turn it back into something we understand (a digital to analog conversion).

Analog information is encoded into a string of binary numbers and on the return trip back to analog, these 1's and 0's either make up that original string of numbers - or they don't. There's very little room for error. Digital can't stand a degraded signal. It throws up it's hands and gives up.

That's why there's error correction.

How does it work? In a very general sense, it looks at patterns and redundant information and uses it to make a very educated guess. Think of a staircase. If someone were to come along and destroy the third stair up, you could simply rebuild the stair by looking at the stair before it, and the stair after it, and conclude the missing stair probably is the same height, color and style. Problems arise when too much information is gone. Going back to the staircase, imagine it was very long with different types if steps. If too many steps were missing, you couldn't make an accurate guess of the pattern and without a blueprint or pattern to follow you'd throw your hands up and quit. That's digital.

For the CD audio world, the error correction is called Reed-Solomon code and it's extra information that's added to the original data to help the DAC (digital to analog converter) to, well... rebuild the stairs. Without Reed-Solomon code, that blank of information causes a failure. In the audio world, it comes out as a large buzz, click, or pop - with absolutely no resemblance to the original information... and it's not subtle.

People need to stop thinking a digital signal is like an analog TV signal. You look at the analog signal, and see a degraded snowy picture when the signal is weak - but it resembles the original. Think about your digital TV signal, and you see what happens when a digital signal degrades and can't be error corrected. It stops abruptly. It throws up its hands and gives up. Thanks to error correction, if the errors are few enough the signal is rebuilt and life goes on.

The authoring (or recording) process, the initial analog to digital conversion and the DAC in the playback device have an infinitely larger affect on sound quality than the media.

While it's true that dye differences and quality of materials affect CD burning, the level of errors that would be needed to alter the effective bandwidth and overall quality of the audio through error correction would be incredibly high. Even with graceful degradation, it's doubtful it would simply exhibit itself as poor sound quality.